Part 55 (1/2)
BARCELO'NA (280), the largest town in Spain next to Madrid, on the Mediterranean, and its chief port, with a naval a.r.s.enal, and its largest manufacturing town, called the ”Spanish Manchester,” the staple manufacture being cotton; is the seat of a bishopric and a university; has numerous churches, convents, and theatres.
BARCLAY, ALEX., a poet and prose-writer, of Scotch birth; bred a monk in England, which he ceased to be on the dissolution of the monasteries; wrote ”The s.h.i.+p of Fools,” partly a translation and partly an imitation of the German ”Narrerschiff” of Brandt. ”It has no value,”
says Stopford Brooke; ”but it was popular because it attacked the follies and questions of the time; and its sole interest to us is in its pictures of familiar manners and popular customs” (1475-1552).
BARCLAY, JOHN, born in France, educated by the Jesuits, a stanch Catholic; wrote the ”Argenis,” a Latin romance, much thought of by Cowper, translated more than once into English (1582-1621).
BARCLAY, JOHN, leader of the sect of the Bereans (1734-1798).
BARCLAY, ROBERT, the celebrated apologist of Quakerism, born in Morays.h.i.+re; tempted hard to become a Catholic; joined the Society of Friends, as his father had done before him; his greatest work, written in Latin as well as in English, and dedicated to Charles II., ”An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and preached by the People called in scorn Quakers,” a great work, the leading thesis of which is that Divine Truth is not matter of reasoning, but intuition, and patent to the understanding of every truth-loving soul (1645-1690).
BARCLAY, WILLIAM, father of John (1), an eminent citizen and professor of Law at Angers; _d_. 1605. All these Barclays were of Scottish descent.
BARCLAY DE TOLLY, a Russian general and field-marshal, of Scottish descent, and of the same family as Robert Barclay the Quaker; distinguished in successive Russian wars; his promotion rapid, in spite of his unpopularity as German born; on Napoleon's invasion of Russia his tactic was to retreat till forced to fight at Smolensk; he was defeated, and superseded in command by Kutusow; on the latter's death was made commander-in-chief; commanded the Russians at Dresden and Leipzig, and led them into France in 1815; he was afterwards Minister of War at St.
Petersburg, and elevated to the rank of prince (1761-1818).
BARD OF AVON, Shakespeare; OF AYRs.h.i.+RE, Burns; OF HOPE, Campbell; OF IMAGINATION, Akenside; OF MEMORY, Rogers; OF OLNEY, Cowper; OF RYDAL MOUNT, Wordsworth; OF TWICKENHAM, Pope.
BARDELL', MRS., a widow in the ”Pickwick Papers,” who sues Pickwick for breach of promise.
BARDOLPH, a drunken, swaggering, worthless follower of Falstaff's.
BARDON HILL, a hill in Leicesters.h.i.+re, from which one can see right across England.
BAR-DURANI, the collective name of a number of Afghan tribes between the Hindu-Kush and the Soliman Mountains.
BAREBONE'S PARLIAMENT, Cromwell's Little Parliament, met 4th July 1653; derisively called Barebone's Parliament, from one Praise-G.o.d Barebone, a member of it. ”If not the remarkablest a.s.sembly, yet the a.s.sembly for the remarkablest purpose,” says Carlyle, ”that ever met in the modern world; the business being no less than introducing of the Christian religion into real practice in the social affairs of this nation.... In this it failed, could not but fail, with what we call the Devil and all his angels against it, and the Little Parliament had to go its ways again,” 12th December in the same year.
BAReGES, a village on the Hautes-Pyrenees, at 4000 ft. above the sea-level, resorted to for its mineral waters.
BAREILLY (121), a city in NW. India, the chief town in Rohilkhand, 153 m. E. of Delhi, notable as the place where the Mutiny of 1858 first broke out.
BARENTZ, an Arctic explorer, born in Friesland; discovered Spitzbergen, and doubled the NE. extremity of Nova Zembla, in 1596, and died the same year.
BAReRE, French revolutionary, a member of the States-General, the National a.s.sembly of France, and the Convention; voted in the Convention for the execution of the king, uttering the oft-quoted words, ”The tree of Liberty thrives only when watered by the blood of tyrants;” escaped the fate of his a.s.sociates; became a spy under Napoleon; was called by Burke, from his flowery oratory, the Anacreon of the Guillotine, and by Mercier, ”the greatest liar in France;” he was inventor of the famous fable ”his masterpiece,” of the ”Sinking of the _Vengeur_,” ”the largest, most inspiring piece of _blaque_ manufactured, for some centuries, by any man or nation;” died in beggary (1755-1841). See VENGEUR.